Shutter Island Quotes

Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?

This world can only give me reminders of what I don't have, can never have, didn't have for long enough.

He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.

The brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it?

How many psychiatrists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “I don’t know. How many?” “Eight.” “Why?” “Oh, stop overanalyzing it.

Maybe there are some things we were put on this earth not to know.

Everyone sees different things.

I loved this woman the way you love ... well, nothing," he said, a note of suprise in his voice. "You can’t compare that kind of love to anything, can you? It’s its own unique gift.

But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.

The world didn't give a shit. It didn't bestow. It took

If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would oherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person’s actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms. It’s a no-win situation. It’s a death penalty really.

I held her, he wanted to say, and if I knew for certain that all it would take to hold her again would be to die, then I couldn't raise the gun to my head fast enough.

She smiled darkly and shook her head. 'I'm not crazy. I'm not. Of course what else would a crazy person claim? That's the Kafkaesque genius of it all. If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point. Do you see what I'm saying?

She was afraid of all that and so much more, but what terrified her most was inside of her, an insect of unnatural intelligence who’d been living in her brain her entire life, playing with it, clicking across it, wrenching loose its cables on a whim.

How am I supposed to let you go, that's all I'm asking. I want to hold you again, smell you, and, yes too, I just want you to fade. To please, please fade...

We were supposed to grow old together, Dolores. Have kids. Take walks under old trees. I wanted to watch the lines etch themselves into your flesh and know when each and every one of them appeared. Die together.

Whatever she saw beyond the camera lens, beyond the photographer, beyond anything in the known world probably - wasn't fit to be seen.

and she was so simply his love, his girl, watching him approach as if she were memorizing him and his walk and those flowers and this moment, and he wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could...

She died in a fire. I miss her like you... If I was underwater, I wouldn't miss oxygen that much.

...someday..., we'll medicate human experience right out of the human experience.

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.

I think if a man beats you and fucks half the women he sees and no one will help you, axing him isn’t the least understandable thing you can do.

Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.

I know you. I've known you my whole life. I've been waiting. Waiting for you to make an appearance. Waiting all these years. I knew you in the womb.

How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?

Believe it or not, Marshal, I believe in talk therapy, basic interpersonal skills. I have this radical idea that if you treat a patient with respect and listen to what he's trying to tell you, you just might reach him. (87)

Chuck said, “Hey. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” Cawley looked over at him. “I’ll bite. How many?” “Fish,” Chuck said and let loose a bright bark of a laugh.

The trick, Teddy had long since learned, was to stay busy and stay focused. They couldn't catch you if you didn't stop running.

You was in all sorts of places, huh?” “Yeah, I was. Saw the world.” “What’d you think of it?” “Different languages, same shit.

Teddy laughed, heard the sound of it carry off on the sweep of night air and dissolve in the distant surf, as if it had never been, as if the island and the sea and the salt took what you thought you had and...

You don't have a partner, Marshal, You came here alone.

Those eyes, Teddy thought. Even frozen in time, they howled. You wanted to climb inside the picture and say, 'No, no, no. It's okay, it's okay. Sssh.' You wanted to hold her until the shakes stopped, tell her that everything would be all right.

She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic.

Got us a full moon too coming tomorrow night. Just make things a whole lot worse. All we need. - Why is that? - What’s that, Marshal? - The full moon. You think it makes people crazy? - I know it does.- Found a wrinkle in one of the pages and used his index finger to smooth it out. - How come? - Well, you think about it—the moon affects the tide, right? - Sure. - Has some sort of magnet effect or something on water. - I’ll buy that. - Human brain,- Trey said, - is over fifty percent water. - No kidding? - No kidding. You figure ol’ Mr. Moon can jerk the ocean around, think what it can do to the head.

I've built something valuable here. But valuable things also have a way of being misunderstood in their own time. Everyone wants a quick fix. We're tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old day back, and we don't even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed. Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress.

He used it on the next guard, the one in front of the fence. He disarmed him, a kid, a baby, really, and the guard said, 'You going to kill me?' 'Jesus, kid, no,' Teddy said and snapped the butt of the rifle into the kid's temple.

Men who believe that the way to the mind is not by way of ice picks through the brain or large dosages of dangerous medicine but through an honest reckoning of the self.

Everyone wants a quick fix. We're tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old days back, and we don't even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed. Patience and forbearance become the first casualties of progress.

He looked back at the page, got one last glimpse before the match blew itself out. Going to find you today, Andrew. If I don't owe Dolores my life, I owe her that much, at least. Going to find you. Going to kill you dead.

The foghorn of Boston Light moaned across the harbor, a sound Teddy had heard every night of his childhood in Hull. The loneliest sound he knew. Made you want to hold something, a person, a pillow, yourself.

I do have my dark days. I suppose everyone does. The difference is that most people don't kill their husbands with an axe.

SUN WAS in the room when he woke. He sat up and looked toward the bars, but the bars weren’t there. Just a window, lower than it should have been until he realized he was up

Baby, why are you all wet?

There's always a 'she'. Isn't there?

A Brief for the Defense Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.

He thought: so this is what it feels like to love. No logic to it - he barely knew her. But there it was just the same. He'd just met the woman he'd known, somehow, since before he was born. The measure of every dream he'd never dared indulge.

Don’t forget—Charlie Chaplin too, my friend.” “I’d do an imitation, but I don’t know what he sounds like.” “Hey, not bad, boss. You can open for me in the Catskills.

If you're not crazy but people have told the world you are, then all your protests to the contrary just underscore their point.

obfuscate.

One that society can't forgive, but I can.

It's the sea, some men take to it. Some men it takes.

But as the years passed, he missed her more not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.

You were having nightmares, Marshal. Serious nightmares.” “I’m in a mental institution on an island in a hurricane,” Teddy said. “Touché,” Cawley said.

Chuck said, "Fuck if I know." Cawley stepped up beside them. "Quite similar to our clinical conclusion.

Lui avrebbe voluto chiederle che rumore fa un cuore quando si rompe per la gioia, quando è sufficiente la vista di qualcuno per riempirti come né il cibo, né il sangue, né l'aria potranno mai fare; quando ti senti come se fossi nato per vivere un momento preciso e quel momento, per qualche ragione particolare, era proprio quello.

Everyone wants a quick fix. We're tired of being afraid, tired of being sad, tired of feeling overwhelmed, tired of feeling tired. We want the old days back, and we don't even remember them, and we want to push into the future, paradoxically, at top speed.

God loves violence. You understand that, don’t you?” “No,” Teddy said, “I don’t.” The warden walked a few steps forward and turned to face Teddy. “Why else would there be so much of it? It’s in us. It comes out of us. It is what we do more naturally than we breathe. We wage war. We burn sacrifices. We pillage and tear at the flesh of our brothers. We fill great fields with our stinking dead. And why? To show Him that we’ve learned from His example.

Jesus, Dolores, you've got to get yourself together. You've got responsibilities. Think about those sometimes - okay? - and get your fucking head right." Those were the last words his wife heard from him. He'd closed the door and walked down the stairs, paused on the last step. He thought of going back. He thought of going back up the stairs and into the apartment and somehow making it right. Or, if not right, at least softer. Softer. That would have been nice.

You think the whole electrical system is fried?” Chuck said, “Good possibility.” “That would mean fences.” Chuck picked up an apple as it floated onto his foot. He went into a windup and kicked his leg and fired it into the wall. “Stee-rike one!” He turned to Teddy. “That would mean fences, yes.

Teddy wondered, and not for the first time, not by a long shot, if this was the day that missing her would finally be too much for him.

I open up—” Cawley again: “Using your keys, correct, Mr. Ganton?” Ganton nodded at Cawley, looked back at his knees. “I use my keys, yeah, ’cause the door’s locked.

Cawley probably wasn’t used to questions that continued after he’d shown displeasure with them, so they gave him a minute to catch his breath.

time is nothing to me but a series of book-marks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me,

But do we lose our past to assure our future?

Yes, yes,” the warden whispered. “’My very chains and I grew friends.

The mind...It's an engine essentially. That's what it is. A very delicate, intricate motor. And it's got all these pieces, all these gears and bolts and hinges. And we don't even know what half of them do. But if just one gear slips, just one...Have you thought about that? It's just like a car. No different. One gear slips, one bolt cracks, and the whole system goes haywire. Can you live knowing that?" He tapped his temple. "That it's all trapped in here and you can't get to it and you don't really control it. But it controls you, doesn't it? And if it decides one day that it doesn't feel like coming to work?" He leaned forward and they could see tendons straining in his neck. "Well, then you're pretty much good and fucked, aren't you?

This was a cruel trick of the mind, yes, but Teddy had long ago accepted the logic of it—waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without a history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present. What

for a moment, distant. “It’s what you do,” Teddy said softly. “Sure,” Chuck said eventually, his face still flushed. The dock appeared as

You told yourself it was okay—because that's what you had to do to cross a body of water—but it wasn't.

It’s an island, boss. They’ll always find us.” Teddy met Chuck’s eyes and nodded. For the first time since they’d met, he could see fear in Chuck’s eyes, his jaw trying to tighten against it.

An entire tree swept past the door, upside down, its roots sprouting upward like horns. “You see that?” “Yeah. It’s gonna wake up in the middle of the ocean, say, ’Wait a second. This isn’t right.’ “’I’m supposed to be over there.’ “’Took me years to get that hill looking the way I wanted it.

Another long pull of the sawteeth across the pink folds of his brain, and Teddy had to bite down against a scream and he heard Rachel’s screams in there too with the fire and he saw her looking into his eyes and felt her breath on his lips and felt her face in his hands as his thumbs caressed her temples and that fucking saw went back and forth through his head— don’ttakethosefuckingpills

He lay on his side, looking out at the sea. So blue at this time of day, so vibrant as the afternoon died around it. He lay there feeling the breeze on his face and the sea spreading out forever under the darkening sky and he felt so small, so utterly human, but it wasn’t a debilitating feeling. It was an oddly proud one. To be a part of this. A speck, yes. But part of it, one with it. Breathing.

I was given a room overlooking Constitution Island. The shutters kept out nearly all the starlight and moonlight—sleeping was a dive into a pit, and the sound of reveille seemed to come from a distant star. I lay there, watching the red light steal through the bottom of the shutters. The darkness felt delicious. I wondered if maybe I’d missed my true career.

Nếu anh không điên nhưng người ta bảo với cả thế giới là anh điên thì mọi nỗ lực phản đối nhằm chứng minh ngược lại sẽ càng giúp củng cố quan điểm của họ.

She couldn’t adapt to the present, to who they were now, warts and all, so she drove winding lanes into the past to warm herself.

I'm just bones in a box, Teddy.

How did anyone know where faith developed? One moment, it wasn't there, the next it was.

Or some guy

Teddy wished that his mother were still alive so she could teach her grandkids you had to get hard, strong. The world didn't give a shit. It didn't bestow. It took.

I'd like to be sitting here five years from now, Marshal, and know you're still in the world." Teddy looked down at the hand on his knee. Looked up at Cawley. "I would too," he said softly.

she was so simply his love, his girl, watching him approach as if she were memorizing him and his walk and those flowers and this moment, and he wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you’d been born for only one moment, and this, for whatever reason, was it.

A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants. Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they have known and the awfulness in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. There is laughter every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta, and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure, but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, we should give thanks that the end had magnitude. We must admit there will be music despite everything. We stand at the prow again of a small ship anchored late at night in the tiny port looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning. To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Banalata Sen Jibananda Das. Translated from the original Bengali by Amitabha Mukerjee A thousand years I have walked these paths, From the harbour at Malacca in the dark of night To the straits of Ceylon at glimmer of dawn. Much have I travelled - The grey world of Ashoka-Bimbisara, Further yet, The dark city of Vidharbha; Around me life foams its stormy breath. Weary of soul, I found a moment's respite in her presence - She: Banalata Sen of Natore. Her hair the ancient darkness of Vidisha, Face a sculpture from Sravasthi. A sailor in distant oceans, rudderless, lost, When hoves into view Island of grass through fronds of cinnamon, A green relief So she felt to me. In the darkness she spoke - "All these years, where had you been?" Her eyebrows arched like the soaring wings of a bird - She: Banalata Sen of Natore. With the sound of dewdrops, Comes evening. The sunset fringe of gold on the eagle's wing Melts into the night And the glow of fireflies. Birds return to nest - The shop of life Shuttered for the day. Left behind in the darkness Face to face - Only she: Banalata Sen of Natore. Original translation 11/90

... he would never, ever, get in the ocean again.... He could feel the age of it, more ancient than gods and prouder of its body count.

But it's a slippery slope. Once you introduce the poison into the well, how do you ever get it out of the water?" "You don't

This was a cruel trick of the mind, yes, but Teddy had long ago accepted the logic of it - waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without a history, then spent blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.

Hier gibt's keine Typen mit Schlafstörungen oder welche, die Angst vor Löchern im Bürgersteig haben. Soweit ich das aus den Akten ersehen konnte, sind die Leute hier, nun ja, richtig plemplem.

You was in all sorts of places, huh?” “Yeah, I was. Saw the world.” “What’d you think of it?” “Different languages, same shit.” “Yeah, that’s the truth, huh?

They drove into the residential area. The houses no longer looked the same to him. Whereas he would have categorized them as sort of humble in their opulence before—just big and grand and enough, not unwieldy in their extravagance, now they were a carnival show. The Craftsmans and Colonials and Federalists and Tudors of his youth were still there, but every third one had been razed to make way for something that looked like either a Frankenstein of architectural indecision or an effigy of an important building in another country: a huge expanse of a house that looked like an Italian palazzo or an English castle or the Taj Mahal or a Spanish villa made by someone who had only heard of those things but had never actually seen them. Or a mixed-media half-Tudor half-midcentury-modern disaster complete with a Texan ziggurat and a turret that made no sense. And the scale! Each lot of land in Middle Rock was inherently generous; the town code stated that houses have to sit on at least half an acre. The lots were still the same size, but now those houses were so large they encroached on the neighboring property lines. And the details were just atrocious: curling wrought-iron gates and shutters that couldn’t possibly work and stone-ish siding and my god, the columns: Corinthian, Doric, Ionic, tragic. Now here is a separate paragraph just for the doors. The doors on these homes were huge, at least two whole people high, like they led into a king’s chambers or the palace of an ancient ruin.

wished they’d take over if it meant we’d finally have peace. In huts like this with shutters made of cottonwood and roofs of coco palms and thatch, we feared nothing but the overseers’ whips. Nothing British could be worse.

-Ora si chieda, come da il dolore a entrare nel corpo? -Dipende da dove ti fai male. -No. Non ha nulla a che vedere con la carne. Il cervello spedisce segnali neurali attraverso il sistema nervoso. Il cervello controlla il dolore. Controlla la paura. Il sonno. L'empatia. La fame. Tutto ciò che associamo al cuore o all'anima o al sistema nervoso in realtà è controllato dal cervello. Tutto.

Dio ama la violenza. Tu capisci, non è così? Altrimenti perché ce ne sarebbe così tanta? La violenza è dentro di noi. Sgorga da noi. È la cosa che ci viene più naturale, prima ancora di respirare. Noi scateniamo guerre. Pratichiamo sacrifici. Saccheggiamo e straziamo le carni dei nostri fratelli. Riempiamo campi immensi di morti, della loro puzza. E perché? Per mostrare a Lui che abbiamo imparato dal Suo esempio.

Non sono pazza. Non lo sono. Certo, cos'altro direbbe una pazza? E' questo l'aspetto geniale della situazione. L'aspetto kafkiano. Se non sei pazza ma la gente ha detto a tutti che lo sei, allora qualsiasi affermazione contraria da parte tua non farà che rafforzare quella tesi. Capisce cosa intendo?

And not the clarity of the insane, but the everyday clarity of an intelligent woman in a less-than-intelligent world. She smiled and gave them each a small, shy wave as she sat.

Qualsiasi cosa tu abbia intenzione di fare, Teddy, non prendere quelle pillole.

È un’isola, capo. Ci troveranno sempre.

Che ci creda oppure no, agente, io credo nella terapia della parola, nelle capacità interpersonali di base. Ho quest’idea rivoluzionaria che se tratti un paziente con rispetto e ascolti quello che cerca di dire, puoi riuscire a raggiungerlo.

-Quanti psichiatri servono per cambiare una lampadina? -Non saprei. Quanti? -Otto. -E perché? -Ah, la smetta di iperanalizzare! Umorismo da strizza cervelli.

LA LEGGE DEL 4 IO SONO 47 LORO ERANO 80 +VOI SIETE 3 NOI SIAMO 4 MA CHI È 67?